Exam pressures, Alien invasion and other reasons not to blog.

Perhaps this is how it'll be here - no formal goodbye just, well, less of a presence. I made a conscious decision to walk away a couple of months ago but I knew I'd wander back. I like this place and I like the virtual friends I have made here. So, there will be no final post here. Like others before me, I'll meander back to say "Hi. How you doing?" I'll still try to read EVERYTHING that comes through my reader, fail miserably and feel guilty. I ponder posts, like the darned good one I thought about which was an extended metaphor of grief as a forest (don'tcha wish I'd been around for that scintillating piece of writing) and then reject them. I agree with Jess - I still have things to say but they aren't always about sinking in a morass of grief or even specifically about Emma any more - although all my observations of my world and my life are threaded with her and my love for her and my longing for her and the space that is not her, but not always consciously now.

So, I will still be writing and definitely still trying to read your blog too if I know of it. It's just got harder. I've just embarked into my annual foray in the world of work-at-home motherdom. Our dining room is currently home to several hundred exam papers to be graded and returned by the end of June. I do this most years and I always forget the slightly panicked feeling I get as friendly postmen unhunch themselves on my doorstep as they divest themselves of heavy looking parcels for me to pour over. I manage it all by chanting "Think of the money, think of the money" under my breath and drinking too much tea.

Besides which, I no longer have internet access during the day. Our ancient old PC has been re-sited into Ben's room, which does not have anywhere for the modem and there seems no way of asking it nicely to connect wirelessly. So, I am constrained to visiting here, via the laptop, in the evenings only when, frankly, my brain has seen better days. The PC has been moved to accommodate a cot in our room for the gorgeous and exceptionally chubby Tobias, who has now outgrown his Moses basket. I always feel slightly envious of co-sleeping mums and dads - it seems so lovely and snuggly to me but it's a no go here. My lovely husband has what I have boldly - and with no medical training at all - designated a mild sleep disorder. It's not at all bad but occasionally he acts out his dreams. I was woken a few months ago when the duvet was unceremoniously ripped off my legs and my (completely asleep) husband started slapping my legs (not hard, I want to stress!) Upon further questioning of said sleepy other half, it turns out he was "getting the aliens off [me]"! So, no little baby in the bed for us (although he does sneak in for his night-time feeds) and no more computer in our bedroom. But at least I can rest easy that I'm sorted in the event of alien invasion.

Little Ewok.

When we realised that I was pregnant for the third time, your daddy and I (well, mainly daddy in all honesty) were thrilled to realise your due date was Sta.r Wa.rs day (May the fourth/"May the force" - groan). Hence your bump name - Little Ewok. I say bump, you never really got to be that. You slipped away from us so quickly and so soon, just six weeks after coming into being and just two weeks after we'd learned of your existence. I know we don't speak of you often. What happened to you - the worst thing ever to have happened to me up to that point in my life - got overshadowed by the death of your little sister. I think you were a little boy and, in my head, your name is Asher. I dreamed of you once - holding hands with a little girl I know was Emma. You were tall, like Ben and blonde, like Lucy. Today, which might have been your second birthday, I have been remembering you and here seemed the right place to do that.

35

Today is my birthday. I am 35. This weekend I have eaten too much cake, drunk some wine (between feeds), watched the DVDs I was given (this, since you ask!) and wondered why this birthday felt significant. It's not 18, 21, 40 - you know, those milestone ages.

And then it dawned on me. I have spent the last nine years of my life absorbed in the world of fertility, pregnancy, birthing and parenting. In that area, 35 IS a significant number. I'm not going to discuss whether or not it should be. It just sort of amused me that I've been so entrenched in getting pregnant, staying pregnant, parenting and grieving that, subconsciously, I invested this age with more significance than it warrants. I won't be pregnant again (not intentionally anyway) so it doesn't matter than I would now qualify as a mother-to-be of "advanced maternal age". I'm okay with being done. I've done some grieving for the end of my childbearing years but essentially I feel like I finished on a high - a living child - and I do not, not for one second of one minute, take that fact for granted. I know that I am one of the "lucky unlucky" to borrow a truthful phrase from Sally.

So, I've had a lovely birthday - and today marks the start of the next bit of my life, getting to watch my family grow. And that is a very good thing to celebrate.